NCAA – Page 132 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Claeys to Wait on Gopher QB Decision

Posted on July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 by David Shama

Everyone knows redshirt senior Mitch Leidner will be the Gophers’ starting quarterback this season, but even head coach Tracy Claeys can’t say who will be No. 2.

Sophomore Demry Croft played in three games as a reserve behind Leidner last season. During the spring Leidner didn’t participate in practices because of foot surgery but neither Croft nor freshman Seth Green (he enrolled at Minnesota in January) separated themselves as the No. 1 backup. Nor did redshirt junior and former walk-on Conor Rhoda, who played briefly in two games during the 2014 season.

Claeys said having 14 days of spring practices wasn’t enough to determine his second unit quarterback. He predicted that about 10 days prior to Minnesota’s opening game the coaching staff will settle on a backup to Leidner.

The Gophers begin formal practices in early August and play Oregon State at home on September 1. Regarding Croft and Green, Claeys said one of them is headed toward a redshirt season.

“There’s no question,” Claeys told Sports Headliners. “One of them will end up being redshirted—however it works out.”

Croft had plenty of learning to do last year as a freshman and looked just okay during his limited playing time. He completed seven of 17 passes for 34 yards, while rushing nine times for 38 yards. Former Gophers coach Jerry Kill has raved about Croft’s potential since he signed him to a National Letter of Intent out of Boylan High School in Rockford, Illinois.

Green, though, who Kill never coached, was the more highly rated prep quarterback in a high school career that included playing time in both Allen, Texas and Woodbury, Minnesota. Scout ranked Green as the No. 4 quarterback in Texas last season, while 247Sports listed him as the No. 10 dual-threat QB in America.

The development of Croft, Green and Rhoda is vital to not only the next few seasons for the Gophers but also this fall. Leidner is considered one of the Big Ten’s best returning quarterbacks and a long-term injury to him could wreck Minnesota’s season.

The Gophers’ prospects for a winning season in the Big Ten are fragile, and to be successful without Leidner Minnesota would probably need a breakthrough performance by one of their young quarterbacks. That’s a predicament neither Claeys nor the fanbase wants to see because the coach believes a healthy team can challenge for the West Division title.

Much of the college football media isn’t as optimistic, making the Gophers a popular choice to finish fifth in the seven-team West Division. However, Minnesota is seen as a dark horse with a favorable schedule and a bowl game waiting as a season-ending prize.

Optimistic Gopher fans are anticipating a 4-0 start when division favorite Iowa brings Floyd of Rosedale to town on October 8. That record will require an opening conference win on the road at Penn State on October 1, and right now the Nittany Lions will be the favorite. Prior to the game in State College, Minnesota will have to defeat two mediocre teams, Oregon State and Colorado State, and FCS ho-humer Indiana State—all at home.

Fans who are high on Maroon and Gold Kool Aid can see a 9-0 start before the Gophers play at Nebraska on November 12. If an undefeated Minnesota team could get by Iowa, the Gophers’ next four games are all against Big Ten opponents with less impressive resumes than Minnesota’s. But road games at Maryland and Illinois could be “trap games,” while wins figure to come easier at home against Rutgers and Purdue (two wins in the last 24 conference games).

All this preseason speculation is fun, of course, but counts for nothing. Just remember last spring when local baseball fans had the Twins winning close to 90 games and perhaps flirting with a postseason series. At the same time national media were penciling in the Twins for last place in the division. By May we all knew who was right.

While nobody knows how much the Gophers will improve on last season’s 6-7 overall and 2-6 conference records, we do understand this: Dinkytown ain’t Columbus, Ohio. Translation: the Gophers roster has nowhere close to the number of talented players and depth of an Ohio State and the other elites of college football.

A year ago Buckeyes fans were pondering who would be named the starter among three potential Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks. It was more than comforting to know that if one went down—or even two were sidelined—there was a star QB waiting to play.

At Minnesota the situation is much different. Gopher followers have collective fingers crossed that Leidner is on the field for 13 games during an eight, nine or 10 wins season.

College Football Notes

Gophers’ border rival Wisconsin has an interesting opening game—hosting SEC power LSU at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Other unusual openers include California and Hawaii in Sydney, Australia; and Boston College and Georgia Tech in Dublin, Ireland.

The Gophers open their season September 1 against Oregon State at TCF Bank Stadium in a Thursday night game televised by the Big Ten Network. The opening weekend of college football includes made for national TV games Alabama-USC, Oklahoma-Houston and Notre Dame-Texas.

About 30 former Gophers, at the invitation of Claeys, attended a welcome reception for incoming freshmen players on campus last night. Each of the alums and freshmen spoke including ex-Gopher tackle Ray Hawes who paid tribute to Sandy Stephens. Now deceased, Stephens was the first African-American All-American quarterback in the nation and helped lead Minnesota to Big Ten and national titles.

Seniors Mitch Leidner, Jack Lynn and Damarius Travis will represent the Gophers at the Big Ten Football Media Days in Chicago July 25 and 26.

Prominent former Gophers assistants are working at other programs including Matt Limegrover, Minnesota’s offensive coordinator last season and now offensive line coach at Penn State. Other “alums” include Kevin Cosgrove and Bob DeBesse who are the defensive and offensive coordinators at New Mexico; Michigan offensive assistant Jedd Fisch; Texas A&M offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone; Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Ted Roof, and Texas State head coach Everett Withers.

It looks like former Gopher Philip Nelson will be the starting quarterback for East Carolina. Nelson is a senior and will play for first-year coach Scottie Montgomery.

Former Gophers football player Mark Sheffert is a nationally-known business advisor in financial, strategic, leadership and governance issues. Sheffert made a presentation and led a discussion on governance with the University of Minnesota Board of Regents last week. He is chairman and CEO of Minneapolis-based Manchester Companies.

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Ex-U Student Managers Change Lives

Posted on June 19, 2016June 21, 2016 by David Shama

As Drew Boe flew to Africa yesterday, he may have thought about former Gophers basketball coach Tubby Smith. No one realized when Smith was let go by the University of Minnesota in March of 2013 that his firing would help establish a nonprofit organization now making annual mission trips to Africa.

Boe is executive director of the St. Louis Park-based Managers On A Mission organization. The nonprofit has three groups working right now in Kenya, Liberia and Uganda. Boe is assisted by college sports student managers on the three week assignments that mentor African orphanage children through athletics.

MOAM's Joseph Kuykendall in Ghana. — MOAM’s Joseph Kuykendall in Ghana.

Boe knew Smith after working as a student manager for him during the 2010-2011 season. After Smith was fired by the Gophers, Boe connected with the coach and received a large donation of his apparel and footwear. College and professional coaches have sponsorship deals with companies like Nike that provide them clothing, shoes and caps.

The donation by Smith provided start-up inventory for Managers On A Mission. All the items from Smith led to the Clean Out For A Cause Program, and then to the sale of apparel and footwear to the public on the Authentic Athletic Apparel eBay Store. Smith’s donation set in motion contributions of apparel and footwear that have been ongoing including the largest gift ever received by MOAM—a one-ton donation delivered on seven pallets.

At the Authentic Athletic Website consumers can shop for items from many schools including Duke, Louisville, Minnesota and Notre Dame. Over 15,000 items for sale are listed with hundreds of pounds of new donations arriving every week.

Since the website’s inception in September of 2013, over 12,000 sales have been made to customers. “We’ve been blessed by really being able to utilize an incredible market that exists for affordable sports clothing,” Boe told Sports Headliners.

Sales to the public provide much of the $200,000 budget for MOAM. Boe is paid fulltime but MOAM mostly goes about its work with part-time help and volunteers. The volunteerism is part of the organization’s mission, to reach out to college student managers and encourage them to develop as leaders who help others.

Student managers are young adults who work tirelessly to do a lot of organizational and grunt work for teams including the glamour college sports of football and basketball. Ask appreciative coaches and athletes how much better run their practices, conditioning and game days are because of student managers who seldom receive public recognition and praise.

For the last couple of years groups of student managers have gone to African countries for three weeks at a time. Their flights, lodging and meals are paid for, but they receive no compensation for time and work while in Africa. And before going the student managers must pay their own costs to attend a two-day training session in Florida at the Rafiki Foundation offices. MOAM coordinates its mission with Rafiki orphanages.

Boe and the others work with kids in Africa teaching them the fundamentals of basketball, soccer and volleyball. They also bring and donate sports gear and clothing.

What they also do is touch hearts and improve the lives of kids who have known the roughest of times in their young lives. “One of the students last year had very significant scars all across the top of his head that just looked so bizarre,” Boe said. “His parents (before the youngster came to the orphanage) were not only not taking care of him, but really the intention was for him to die through the cuts that they had placed on him.”

The young man’s name is Williams. Boe remembered Williams’ cheerful personality last week in an email to Sports Headliners. “Williams had a new joke or riddle to share every single day,” Boe wrote. “Always trying to make people laugh!”

Some of the children at the orphanages are very young. Boe recalled a four-year-old girl who had come to an orphanage with her younger brother. The parents died from AIDS and the children had lived without adult care prior to the orphanage.

“Essentially the four-year-old had been the caretaker for the two-year-old for who knows how long,” Boe said.

Getting to know the children and bonding with them makes up for the inconveniences of being in a different culture. After multiple trips to Africa, Boe knows what his American colleagues will usually find as the major adjustment.

“The food can be a challenge,” he said. “That’s definitely the biggest challenge for the time over there…is the adjustment to the food. We’re certainly well fed and there’s no risk of anything being contaminated, or anything like that. It just requires…a different preference in terms of food choices. There’s a lot of rice and beans.”

There can, however, be a contrarian. “It seems like there is always one person that for some reason ends up loving it (the food),” Boe said. “They can’t get enough rice and beans, or can’t get enough eggplant.”

MOAM was founded in 2013 by Boe and two other Gopher student managers, Chris Herkenhoff from football and Ryan Wieland of men’s basketball. The organization is assisted by an advisory council of former Gopher basketball players Roger Arnold, Pat Fitzsimmons and Al Nuness, and ex-student manager John Bell Wilson.

Fitzsimmons e-mailed Sports Headliners urging readers of this column to visit www.authenticathleticapparel.com and make a purchase to help all the activities of MOAM which include college scholarship assistance for student managers and others involved with athletics. “As you check out MOAM’s awesome selections, keep in mind 85 percent of all purchases go to youth scholarships, mission trips and support of the Rafiki orphanages with food, sports equipment and clothing,” he wrote.

Boe, who is currently in Kenya, never set a career goal of helping to start and guide an endeavor like MOAM. He thought his career track might be in a college athletics department working in administration but a mission trip to Rwanda during graduate school began to change his life. He was touched by the joy and peacefulness of the Christians who lived there, and he said the experience further helped define his relationship with Jesus Christ.

Boe grew up in the small southeast Minnesota town of Taopi, population 53. He played football and golf in high school. He attended a Catholic church and while religion was part of his life, including during college years, he looks back and feels like he was just “checking the boxes.”

What the trip to Rwanda prompted was a beginning awareness of how he wanted to help others, while following the Lord. Boe describes what happened to him in Rwanda as a “seed” being planted that ultimately led to MOAM. He and the other two founders of MOAM came to realize there is a void in Africa for sports camps and the need for young men like his student managers to fill it.

They have an opportunity to show African children that it’s not just older adult couples, or females in their 20s and 30s who come to Africa as missionaries—that mentors can be young males in their 20s like those who serve through MOAM. Younger male role models are important, because according to multiple accounts, more than 20 million children live in Africa without fathers present in the home.

“This is something that has been put very heavy on my heart (serving as MOAM’s leader),” Boe said. “I don’t see myself ever leaving Managers On A Mission, or being away from it. …We’ve just been trying to keep up with what the Lord has been doing. It’s pretty cool.”

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Kaler, Coyle Reach Out to U Critic

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by David Shama

There has been no more vocal critic of University of Minnesota athletics than Jim Carter, but the former Gophers football captain acknowledged that school president Eric Kaler and new athletic director Mark Coyle have reached out to him.

Carter was unhappy about Kaler not placing him on the search committee to select the athletic director, despite having a landslide number of nominations from friends and contacts. An advocate for excellence, Carter has criticized University administrators for not creating a winning culture, and has been angry with a series of embarrassments in the athletic department including the job performances of departed athletic director Norwood Teague and men’s basketball coach Richard Pitino.

About two weeks ago Kaler announced Coyle as his choice to succeed interim AD Beth Goetz. The day of the announcement, and prior to holding the news conference, Kaler called Carter. “(Kaler) said they hired a superstar,” Carter told Sports Headliners. “Those are his words, and (he) asked me to greet the new man warmly.

“Then a couple days after Coyle got the job he was nice enough to call, which I was impressed with. I would expect it if a guy was good…he would call the people like me that have voiced lots of disagreement with Kaler and with the way the athletic department is being run. …

“So he did reach out to say let’s get together for a cup of coffee. Wanted to introduce himself over the phone. I congratulated him on getting the job, and I would guess that we’ll get together and get a chance to meet in person.”

The Coyle hire has been applauded by fans, media and others. The 47-year-old Iowa native has an impressive background in athletics administration that includes stops at Boise State, Kentucky and Syracuse. He was the AD at both Boise and Syracuse, and while at Kentucky reportedly helped raise more than $140 million. Before going to those schools Coyle worked in the Gophers athletic department with responsibilities that included marketing, licensing and sponsorships.

“I am sure he is a talented guy,” Carter said. “As you know, I was favoring hiring a person not in the (college athletic director) ranks, or working their way up as assistant AD. I would have much preferred an M man (U letter winner) …somebody that has been in (private) business.

“Having said all that, this looks like a good candidate. We’ll see. It’s still early on. What he (Coyle) does with that Pitino thing, I think we’ll know right away.”

Pitino is under intense scrutiny because of off-court incidents involving his players, and a school worst ever Big Ten record last season of 2-16. Before Kaler introduced Coyle at the news conference he spoke about how “profoundly disappointed” he is with the basketball program.

Don’t Expect Kill to Replace K-State Coach

Former Gophers football coach Jerry Kill starts his new job as an administrator, assisting with the Kansas State football program in July. As associate athletic director, Kill’s job will be to help the program any way he can including directly for legendary head coach Bill Snyder.

Snyder will be 77 in October. Could Kill some day replace him?

“I don’t want to coach (again),” Kill told Sports Headliners on Friday. “It’s not worth the risk.”

The risk, of course, is Kill’s health including his fight with epilepsy. Health issues prematurely ended his era (2011-2015) as Gophers coach last fall. He rebuilt the Gophers into a respected Big Ten program that had various highlights including taking his 2014 team to its first New Year’s Day Bowl game since 1962.

Asked about Power Five Conference offers to coach elsewhere when he was with Minnesota, Kill said there were “one or two” jobs he could have had. Kill didn’t identify those schools but one might have been Nebraska after coach Bo Pelini was let go following the 2014 season.

Carter is among those who believe Nebraska did have conversations with the Gophers coach. If true, Kill turned down the Cornhuskers out of loyalty to Minnesota. That loyalty remains in place toward new Gophers head coach Tracy Claeys, his assistants and players. Kill refers to them as “my guys” and said it will be a “passion” for him to help the program whenever he can.

Carter knows Kill well and while voicing his own perspective didn’t dismiss the possibility the 54-year-old Kansas native might one day find circumstances different than now and want to coach. “…Kill hasn’t indicated any different to me than he has (said) publicly and to the press. He said the same thing, that he is done coaching.

“It’s my personal opinion that Kill is through and through a head football coach. It would not surprise me to see him coach again, and even at the Power Five Conference level because he is a young man and he’s got a lot of energy. If his health keeps continuing to be good, it would not surprise me to see him be a head coach again.”

These days Kill is enjoying a more relaxed schedule than the nearly 24-7 grind he had as Gophers coach and fundraiser for the athletic department. He pays close attention to his diet and exercise routine. He is even playing golf for the first time in 14 years.

Kill is keeping his office open in Minneapolis for the Chasing Dreams Fund through the Epilepsy Foundation, and will return to Minnesota in a few months to promote a new book about his life. Kill’s daughter Krystal lives in the metro area so there are multiple reasons for him to come up this way. “It’s only a seven hour drive from Manhattan to the Twin Cities,” he said.

Kill will keep a connection to Minnesota, and that’s good news for his many friends and admirers.

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